This year, my big garden project is adding in a medicinal herb bed (in addition to expanding the gardens and trying to grow enough food for all of us for a year--more on that later). I've gotten to the point in my disability/medical journey that medicines just don't work on me, but herbs seem to help at least some.
In my medicinal herb bed, I'm growing comfrey, fennel, oats (for milky oat and straw), red clover, elderberry, motherwort, sweetgrass (that's for a local tribe, though), plantain, dandelions, garlic, nettles, and borage. The sweetgrass finally got here today, so after that acclimates (and after the snow Saturday night melts on Sunday or Monday), I'll be able to get that in. The red clover and garlic are up, as are some of the oats (I'm thinking the squirrels got to those, so I'll have to plant more seeds). I've been transplanting motherwort I've found around the yard, so I think that will work out, and I even already got a tincture going of the new, young leaves, to see if it helps.
For other herbs, I'm growing bay laurel (for the first time in years--finally found a source in The Grower's Exchange, and I'm so excited!), Roman chamomile, chives, garlic chives, basil, lemon basil, thyme, lemon balm, lavender, green sage, golden sage, catmint, catnip (this one grows wild in the yard), more garlic, oregano, arnica, and some others I'm sure I'm forgetting. Some are going in the Garden Tower, some in containers I keep by the pool, some in the kitchen garden by the back door, and some in the beds by the pool (more sun there).
This summer, I will be either foraging or going into the garden to get the herbs I need for trying new teas, tinctures, and more. I'm really hopeful that the nettles will help with some stuff, but in reality, this is all fairly new to me. In researching herbs and our family's various issues, I keep finding some that really might help me. Even if it is just a little bit of help, that will be enough for me. I'm still not used to taking tinctures (tend to put them in my water bottle since I don't drink alcohol), so I'm also looking into oxymels and other kinds of herbal mixtures.
As fo growing all our own food, that's a big project in process. I read a few different sites with different recommendations for how much to grow, and then I tweaked them a bit since we don't eat as much salsa, say, as other families. The big job this year, other than expanding the kitchen garden and using the Ruth Stout method on the back garden in hopes we can feed that soil and keep it productive, is going to be putting all the food up and then tracking it. So, I've started a rough spreadsheet (on Google Drive so I can put it in my phone rather than try to remember where I put the garden binder), and I'm starting to get that set. We plan on canning most of it, though a lot of the veggies are better frozen or dried. Between our two dehydrators and our canning operation, we should be good. Putting up the herbs in addition to the usual canning is going to be a real energy drain, but I hope I can get the kids to help even a little.
With the floods in the Midwest this spring and so much going on with global warming messing up the usual patterns, food prices are going to go up. That means we have to grow as much as we can this year and put it all up so we have food available all the time. With my medical issues and inability to take meds, I'm going to be growing and putting up herbs for use all year and doing what I can to get a better handle on this fibromyalgia.
